


lazuli came first.

by agentmaine



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, yes this is a fic about a character that never showed up in canon. dont look at me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26050273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmaine/pseuds/agentmaine
Summary: sir amanda maillard is a knight of house cruller, and the queen's champion. duty would be easier if she were not in love with a woman who's one great love has already come and gone.
Relationships: Amanda Maillard/Caramelinda Rocks, Caramelinda Rocks/Lazuli Rocks
Kudos: 16





	lazuli came first.

**Author's Note:**

> i have no excuse i just heard "queens champion" and used my dykeification beam on maillard <3

Lazuli came first.

That is the fundamental truth in Sir Amanda Maillard’s life, although she wishes that were not true. Not the fact that Lazuli came first - of course, she’d never disrespect the Archmage. Lazuli was a woman renowned by all, Maillard included. She is revered even in memory. No, it’s not that Maillard wishes Lazuli hadn’t come first. 

She just wishes that it did not define so much of her existence.

When Lord Cruller recommended her as the Queen’s Champion, it was not her place to question. Although under firm unspoken instruction to make Cruller aware of goings on in Castle Candy that he may be unaware of (not that many of those existed, Amanada had made the point not to say), her main goal was to serve, aid and protect the Queen. It would have been nice, she thinks, to have kept it at that. There is no doubt in her mind of her competence as a knight, a fighter, a protector, and there never has been reason for her to question her ability.

But the heart is a confusing thing, and desires and disappointments, although not in any way disrupting her ability to serve her Queen, disrupt her ability to serve with a level head, one unclouded with the fog of emotion that has come to hover over every waking moment, and seep into her dreams.

At some point, Maillard fell in love with her Queen. The late nights guarding Caramelinda in her quarters standing by the door as she studied moved to her seated inside the room, a breach in formality, gentle and deadly. She had tried to remain guarded. She had tried to remain objective.

But she just loved to listen to her Queen speak.

In the flickering of candlelight, Caramelinda read aloud letters from Lords and Ladies across the nation, laughing softly at their clumsy compliments used in pathetic attempts to soften and sweeten their demands. Maillard commented that Cruller had always been good at that, as fast with words as with his weapon in the wars passed, and Caramelinda had agreed with a nod. When reading of official letters slipped into gossiping, and when tea turned to wine, Amanda had followed as instructed. When gossiping turned into reminiscing, Amanda shared her story when asked. When she felt listened to, she felt her heart swell inside her chest.

And when Caramelinda had kissed her for the first time, in that same study, tucked into shadows against a towering bookshelf from which Maillard was reaching for a book on a higher shelf, there was no way for Sir Amanda Maillard to even pretend it was unwanted.

Amanda knows, in her mind, attuned to logic and order, that there is no way for her to love Caramelinda without Lazuli playing into every aspect of it, every nook and cranny. Even as she falls in love with Caramelinda, and falls, and falls, and falls, Amanda is aware she is falling in love with the woman shaped by the love and loss experienced all from the Archmage. Her Queen has lived a life defined by love and loss and it shaped her, sculpted her with the rough hands of bad luck and awful fate and broken hearts, into the fierce, strong, independent, intelligent, demanding woman that Amanda herself has devoted herself to. The woman she loves stands in the shadow of the woman who came before her, and Amanda is exposed to the harsh light of reality.

Although Caramelinda will always be her first - her first love, her first point of order, her first loyalty - she would be lucky to be the Queen’s second.

Caramelinda cares for her, of course. She is kind to her, and she wants to love her. She does, in a way. But it’s a love tinted by grief, and regret, and the fact that this only happens because her first choice, her preferred reality, is buried under the ground and memorialised in statue and painting. It’s hard to forget, even with the desire to indulge in forgetting reality, when the Queen’s wedding band stays on a necklace and rests over her heart, where Lazuli lives on.

When Maillard sneaks out of Caramelinda’s room at night, hands carding through her hair to resemble the visage of someone much more put together than she feels, Caramelinda never asks her to stay. 

When Cruller sees her one night, intending to sneak to her quarters as Cruller undoubtedly makes his way to Amethar’s - Castle Candy’s worst kept secret - he meets her eyes with a solemn nod and a look of something like understanding.

The one thing Amanda notices, amidst the disappointment that continues to fill her stomach whenever she makes this lonely retreat to her own room, is that Cruller does not look surprised.


End file.
